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MIDDLE EAST | Updates from regional conflicts:

• Citing the scale, scope, and nature of human rights violations, as well as the legal criteria for genocide, hundreds of staff members at the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights sent a letter to agency head Volker Turk yesterday asking him to explicitly describe the Gaza war as an unfolding genocide. [more]
• The U.N. Security Council is scheduled to vote today on a resolution that would end the more-than-four-decade operation of the U.N. peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon at the end of 2026. [more]

UKRAINE | Today is day 1,281 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Here are your updates:

• At least 14 people were killed, and 48 others were wounded, overnight in Russia's first large-scale drone and missile attack in weeks on the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. According to Ukraine's military, Russia launched 598 attack drones and decoys and 31 missiles of different types at targets across Ukraine overnight. [more]
• Reports say the headquarters of the European Union mission to Ukraine and the British Council were among the buildings damaged in Russia's overnight drone and missile strikes on Kyiv. [more]

U.S. GUN VIOLENCE | Two children were killed, and 14 other children and three adults were wounded, yesterday, when 23-year-old Robin Westman, armed with a rifle, a shotgun, and a pistol, opened fire through the windows of a Catholic church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, while some 200 students of the Annunciation Catholic School were celebrating Mass. Westman died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the scene. Authorities say investigations into the shooter's motives are ongoing and that the shooting is being investigated as an act of domestic terrorism and a hate crime targeting Catholics. [more]

U.S. CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL | The Department of Health and Human Services said yesterday that CDC Director Susan Monarez has been fired and cited Monarez not being "aligned with" President Donald Trump’s agenda as the reason for the move. Attorneys for Monarez, who was sworn in less than a month ago, say she neither resigned nor was told she was being fired. The firing follows several high-profile resignations at the CDC this week, including those of the agency’s deputy director, the head of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, the head of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Disease, and the director of the CDC's Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology. [more]

GEORGIA | Saying the law does not allow vetoes of qualified nominees proposed by political parties, Georgia Superior Court Judge David Emerson has ordered the government of Georgia's Fulton County to pay $10,000 per day until it appoints two Republican nominees to its election board as required by law. [more]

U.S. AND MEXICO | Mexico's postal service has joined those of more than 30 other countries in announcing a suspension of package shipments to the United States ahead of tomorrow's end of the U.S. "de minimis" tariff exemption that allows packages worth less than $800 to enter the U.S. duty-free and which has been in place in various forms since 1938. [more]

U.S. AND JAPAN | Japanese trade envoy Ryosei Akazawa cancelled a planned trip to Washington, DC, today aimed at issuing a joint statement on the U.S.-Japan trade deal announced on July 22. Reports cite Japanese government officials as saying the trip was postponed due to some provisions of the agreement not yet having been implemented by U.S. regulators. [more]

EUROPEAN CLIMATE | A new study from climate research group World Weather Attribution concludes that deadly wildfires in Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus this summer were made 10-times more likely due to climate change and related low levels of rainfall and higher temperatures. [full study][more]

NIGERIA | Local officials say at least eight people have died, and more than 200 people across 11 communities have been sickened, in an ongoing cholera outbreak in the Bukkuyum district of Zamfara state in northwest Nigeria. [more]

IRAN | Amidst the continuing threat of re-imposed sanctions on Iran by European nations over Tehran's nuclear program, Iran's currency, the rial, fell to near-record lows today, trading at just over 1 million to $1 – down from its 2015 level of 32,000 to $1 when a nuclear deal was first reached with world powers. [more]

NORTH KOREA | State news agency KCNA reports that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un  will be among 26 foreign leaders attending a military parade in Beijing, China, next week marking the end of World War II. [more]

TODAY IN HISTORY | On this date in 1963, during the March on Washington, civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech before an estimated 250,000 people in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. [more history]